Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Reive]

The real irony here is that the devs themselves credit the game's ongoing success with its willingness to evolve.

https://www.videogamer.com/features/...ess-to-evolve/

It turns out that what people mean when they say that "retail is stale," is actually that devs haven't listened to their super-specific, super idealistic suggestions on how the game should be developed. The game is successful in spite of them, and that makes them all the more inclined to seek validation for their (often terrible) opinions about how the game should be designed.

personally i appreciate them trying different things even if it's not something i personally enjoy. it's been less than 24 hours and i've already seen many posts about deleting the drive system. this playerbase has gotten really petty when it comes to letting blizzard know they don't enjoy something.

[The-Shan]

Its pretty awkward how every character except renzik is voice acted, especially after they gave Renzik that whole awesome short story/backstory thing.

[Relapses]

personally i appreciate them trying different things even if it's not something i personally enjoy. it's been less than 24 hours and i've already seen many posts about deleting the drive system. this playerbase has gotten really petty when it comes to letting blizzard know they don't enjoy something.

It hasn't gotten petty, it's been this way for eons. The important thing to remember is that places like this forum and reddit are microcosms of the greater WoW community and while you might meet many terminally dissatisfied customers around here, that isn't always representative of the greater community at-large. Blizzard has tools to track player engagement so they know exactly what does and doesn't work long before the zeitgeist turns on a feature. A few buttmad posters who would be upset with anything less than a MMO designed precisely to their desires aren't worth the time it takes to read their posts.

[Relapses]

The game always seems the most successful when they're just doing the old school things, though. Natural biomes, sword and board fantasy stuff, dungepns and dragons, the Burning Legion, the Scourge, the Old Gods, and so on.

When they stray off the beaten path and introduce whacky stuff like Shadowlands, players become disillusioned. I hope the Undermine doesn't have that effect.

When the game evolves something the right way, it tends to expand on old things people like. More customisation, prettier horizons, quality of life features for dungeons and raids, and so on.

Why is it always that the game evolves in the "right way" when they do the stuff that you personally think they should do?

[Joshuaj]

Yeah, I just logged off for the night after playing for about 30 min down there. Korthia was better.

Lmao wtf is this take?

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The game always seems the most successful when they're just doing the old school things, though. Natural biomes, sword and board fantasy stuff, dungepns and dragons, the Burning Legion, the Scourge, the Old Gods, and so on.

When they stray off the beaten path and introduce whacky stuff like Shadowlands, players become disillusioned. I hope the Undermine doesn't have that effect.

When the game evolves something the right way, it tends to expand on old things people like. More customisation, prettier horizons, quality of life features for dungeons and raids, and so on.

So...the right way to you is nostalgia bait? Come on dude.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Undermine is actual a better decision than anything else they could've done, obviously the way they moved the Narrative towards it and what justification for said movement is well quite absurd in my opinion, but it is whatever.

It still is probably a better call to at least use the Underground Setting and put Undermine in the game even if it sacrifices the momentum of the A Plot storyline.

Obviously, this is under the assumption that they had no plan which considering the mid production changes wouldn't really surprise me.

If they actually had a plan for this, I find the decisions here rather puzzling as they essentially stopped the narrative momentum for a very, very long time and it only starts up again around Nightfall if we're lucky.

I just feel these big pivots from the A Plot are better served in a game structure with 3 Major Patches, we just have less space for these type of ordeals and so far I feel that the movement of the Pivot Patches to B Plots and Side related storylines to the First Major Patch have depressed the momentum of the franchise.

[Joshuaj]

The A plot sucks ass, so I'm glad we got this LMAO

[Reive]

Well, like I said it seems to correlate with higher subscriber numbers and a healthier game overall.

WoW is comfort food. People like comfort food. Especially when the playerbase largely consists of 30-50 year old dudes who played for 10+ years.

wow needs to attract new players. it can't always be ONLY comfort food.

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It hasn't gotten petty, it's been this way for eons. The important thing to remember is that places like this forum and reddit are microcosms of the greater WoW community and while you might meet many terminally dissatisfied customers around here, that isn't always representative of the greater community at-large. Blizzard has tools to track player engagement so they know exactly what does and doesn't work long before the zeitgeist turns on a feature. A few buttmad posters who would be upset with anything less than a MMO designed precisely to their desires aren't worth the time it takes to read their posts.

i've been playing for 15 years and i don't remember people being SO toxic about everything.

also, while i agree that blizzard tracks things better i also think that a 24/7 aura of negativity is bad marketing for the game. it's off putting for those who enjoy the game and even worse for those who want to try it for the first time

[Relapses]

Well, like I said it seems to correlate with higher subscriber numbers and a healthier game overall.

WoW is comfort food. People like comfort food. Especially when the playerbase largely consists of 30-50 year old dudes who played for 10+ years.

That might be the demographic for Classic but retail is still looking to attract new players. That means trying new shit and sometimes that even means trying new shit that you might not like. They aren't doing this out of spite, they're doing this because this is how WoW has stayed relevant two decades later.

[Reive]

I don't think content like Shadowlands or Undermine is how you attract new players to WoW, tbh. Who's going to put Fortnite, Marvel Rivals, or even Elder Scrolls Online down in order to jump into a damp cave, listen to jazz and grind rare mobs? It's not shiny enough for the first crowd, it's not engaging enough for the second, and it's not immersive enough for the third.

WoW succeeds when it announces a callback to old content in a major way. "Come see the fabled Dragon Isles and ride your own dragon," or "Return to the fabled lands of Quel'thalas and play your own High Elf". That's the kind of stuff that brings in millions of subscribers, new and old.

do you realize that undermine as a concept is older than most of the warcraft lore? i find it funny when people say that the goblin aesthetic "doesn't fit wow". also, we can't always have patches about elves. undermine as theme is a breath of fresh air (even if the actual zone smells badly)

on the point on not being shiny enough, blizzard needs to try new things but can't scrap completely the og core gameplay. that's why most patches are the usual+something new.

[Relapses]

wow needs to attract new players. it can't always be ONLY comfort food.

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i've been playing for 15 years and i don't remember people being SO toxic about everything.

also, while i agree that blizzard tracks things better i also think that a 24/7 aura of negativity is bad marketing for the game. it's off putting for those who enjoy the game and even worse for those who want to try it for the first time

It's called negativity bias. Himuraredx did a video on this a few years ago and it's still just as relevant today:



FWIW, it's honestly not that bad right now. The worst we had it was during the SL content drought when the game was in a pretty dire state and the CA lawsuit stuff had just broke the news. Some people just want a negativity echo chamber. Hit 'em with logic and move on. Try not to bring yourself down to their level. (Advice I haven't always been keen to take myself.)

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

The entire reason that this patch exists is to appeal to legacy fans who wanted to see Undermine implemented. Absolutely, there's a ton to criticize about the way the Base Expansion transitioned to 11.1 and the fact it is a ridiculous reason to pivot this hard into a Goblin storyline but ultimately they did it. Sooo.

This is a fan service decision in a sense, both for the Older Audience of World of Warcraft but also the World of Warcraft Team itself as the story is literally a Pro-Union message story in a just recently unionized workforce that is killing their old boss. (figuratively).

Absolutely you cannot deny the way this game moves from the Base Expansion to its Live Service component and how it completely neglects the A Plot and nor do they really put in a bit of efffort to make it flow instead just letting it dry out but that's just how Blizzard operates and at the end of the day, it costs money to do extra things to keep people engaged.

I don't really have any horse in any other races, I just want the A Plot to be treated with the same reverence as they marketed it to us at Blizzcon. I find the whole Base -> X.1 experience for both Aberrus and Undermine to have left a bitter taste in my mouth. It's just too incoherent and it just dries out any interest and engagement for the game.

The game's in an extremely good state outside of this one pet peeve I have and I am really happy that the Team had so much fun with the creation of this Patch and what not, so in a way I don't mind Undermine(d) at all even if again I have a strong distaste for everything post Beledar Dark Heart slurping.

[Eldryth]

The real irony here is that the devs themselves credit the game's ongoing success with its willingness to evolve.

https://www.videogamer.com/features/...ess-to-evolve/

And I fully agree with their assessment on that.

I also used to play FFXIV a lot. And for a while, I loved their general gameplay model. But seeing how repetitive their safe, formulaic patches and expansions got made me appreciate the risks Blizzard takes with WoW a lot more. I still go back occasionally to catch up on the story, but the gameplay usually feels like they just keep putting a fresh coat of paint on the same thing that got old years ago and never improves. At most, it gets an additional short-lived side mode.

Sometimes those risks don't really work out (especially in Shadowlands and BFA), but there's been even more times where they improved the game a lot. Mythic+, World Quests, Dragonriding, the Vault, the current talent system, Trading Post, the gear upgrade system (even if they still need to fix/remove Valorstones), Delves... all great additions that we never would have gotten if the devs hadn't been willing to innovate and take risks.

At this point, I'd much rather they keep innovating rather than playing it safe and getting repetitive. Even if that means they occasionally fail, I'd gladly take the occasional bad patch- even if they're as disastrous as Korthia- over them just doing the same thing again and again. So long as they learn from those mistakes and don't have a lasting quality decline- things they've been great about since DF- I can always just take a break and look forward to the next patch.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

They're a self aware team now, so I don't think the usual criticism of "don't do different things because you ruin the game further" applies because they are more likely to just reverse course if they see the feedback is negative unlike the ten year long war on Titanforging or Build Around System discourse.

Obviously, they're also a bit scared these days which I don't think they need to be. But, that's whole 'nother topic.

[Sondrelk]

I really don't see how Undermine lacks nostalgia. One of the areas is part of an older zone (BfA, but still). You heavily interact with Classic characters like Revilgaz and Noggenfogger. Venture Company are mainstays of WoW. And seeing them continue being exploitative opportunists is exactly what you would expect from WoW Goblins.

It's extremely over the top and stylized. And I won't argue it will likely get tiring after a while. But saying Undermine is bad because it doesn't appeal to nostalgia just rings patently false to me.

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Absolutely you cannot deny the way this game moves from the Base Expansion to its Live Service component and how it completely neglects the A Plot and nor do they really put in a bit of efffort to make it flow instead just letting it dry out but that's just how Blizzard operates and at the end of the day, it costs money to do extra things to keep people engaged.

Honestly, the issue is more so the change in pacing from the older 4 raid expansion to the post-SL 3 raid ones.
We always had mid expansion patches with relatively hard pivots. The difference is just that we usually had two raids first to become well and truly done with the core expansion content first before we dove into the B-plot.

The shorter expansions just puts patches like this into much sharper relief. Not to mention that the Goblin aesthetic is distinct enough its hard to mesh naturally with other themes.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I don't mind pivot patches, I think they're awesome in the old structure, actually.

Its just that because of the reduction we have essentially had to force the Pivot to the start of the Expansion and that clearly does something to the momentum of the expansion that at least to me drains me of any interest by the time we get back to a Minor Patch centered on the A plot.

Although, ultimately to me I don't know if B Plots/Sideplots can be Major Patch content due to the reduction. For all I know a Pivot Patch in the X.2 would also fare the same way.

Again, I don't really want to open the can of worms on the game structure.

They decided on this and ultimately I am vehemently disappointed that they settled for it but I understand that there's financial motivations to make this direction and again what's done is done and when its this high level executive decisions it clearly will never really be a actual topic of discussion discussed by our Leadership no matter what happens in the future.

Its' settled law and you just have to abide by it even if it is really strange to market such a heavy A Plot Story Focus when ultimately it doesn't feel like that all at this point.

The justification for the connection to the A Plotline in Undermine is flimsy at best and nonsensically "caught with pants down" at worst.

[Cheezits]

This is the first patch that feels attached to Warcraft proper since Visions of N'zoth, I'm really not sure what the issue is besides "I don't like the patch/expansion theme".

This could've come out in any patch since Cata- it would've just looked a lot uglier. It's connection to Xal plot is flimsy at most but it's a "now or never" situation with it looking like there is no other alternative we could've had besides Orweynaworld (which we still are getting) or Qirajiworld underneath Silithus (arguably as or more divisive a theme than Undermine). This isn't like BFA where Tel Abim, Plunder Isle and Zuldare were RIGHT there, but ignored... for MECHAGON.

Is some much better patch idea missing? Because if not, the expansion is the bad idea, not the patch, as it would be as long as WoD otherwise (Nerubian -Hallowfall mini patch -Roots)

[Marlamin]

Encrypted vendor client is already up for 11.2. Boss, I'm tired.

[Joshuaj]

I love the New York/Las Vegas vibes of Undermine. Not sure how y'all don't fw it.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I mean, at least it is freight train mode for the next foreseeable future with this game and we also get a good time at Gamescom.

No, I do not think there was any better ideas than Undermine(d) for X.1. I just hate the neglectful state of the A Plot and how unserious they take it.